North Korea Scraps 1953 Armistice; Two Years Later, Debris from Japanese Tsunami Washing Up in Hawaii; Playboy Has New Hebrew Edition; Facebook Exec's New Book Criticized

Aired March 11, 2013 - 12:30 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: To our audience in the United States and AROUND THE WORLD, welcome back. Here are the stories, top stories, that we're following around the world right now.

In Vatican City, countdown underway, cardinals held their final pre- conclave meeting earlier today. Tomorrow, they're going to be locked inside the Sistine Chapel. That's where they're going to begin voting on who should replace Benedict the XVI.

And in India, it was a crime that set off protests across the country and across the world. A woman was gang raped and beaten to death on a bus. Well, now, one of the suspects, the bus driver, is dead. Police say Ram Singh killed himself on Monday apparently using his clothes to hang himself in his cell. He was one of five men on trial for the December attack. His parents are claiming he was murdered.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: In eastern Afghanistan this morning, another insider attack, so-called "green-on-blue," two American soldiers were killed when a gunman wearing an Afghan security forces uniform opened fire on a group of NATO and Afghan service members. Ten other U.S. service members were wounded in that same attack.

And just this weekend the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, accused the United States of colluding with the Taliban to scare the Afghan people. He said both sides want to convince Afghans that violence will worsen if foreign troops leave the country.

Those comments coming after a bombing in Kabul on Saturday during a visit by the U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. A scheduled news conference between Hagel and Karzai was canceled following the comments. The two did later meet in private.

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CHUCK HAGEL, DEFENSE SECRETARY: We did discuss those comments. I told the president it was not true, that the United States was unilaterally working with the Taliban in trying to negotiate anything.

The fact is, any prospect for peace or political settlements, that has to be led by the Afghans.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HOLMES: At the top of the hour, we're going to get more on the Hagel visit, also on those attacks in Afghanistan today. Barbara Starr's going to join us from the Pentagon.

MALVEAUX: There are threats of preemptive nuclear strike. Attempts to communicate through a hotline now have failed.

Today, North Korea said the agreement ending the Korean War is dead. As Anna Coren tells us, all this comes as the U.S. and South Korea begin joint military exercises.

ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Suzanne, after making threats they would scrap the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War, North Korea lived up to its word, announcing through its state broadcaster that its truce with South Korea was now invalid.

Well, it comes after a week of war-like rhetoric from Pyongyang, as well as tough U.N. sanctions.

Now, the armistice is a legal document that theoretically stops the resumption of the Korean War, but these latest developments would indicate that that 60-year-old truce is now dead.

Well, the emergency phone hotline between the two countries was also severed. That's not the first time that Pyongyang has done this, but in the current climate if there is a military provocation, then there's no means of communication between the two countries.

The United States and South Korea are currently holding military exercises on the Korean Peninsula. They say that this is part of their annual drills. Now, experts here in Seoul say that Pyongyang will wait until they're over before they launch any attack.

Suzanne?

MALVEAUX: Thank you. In Japan, tsunami created a debris field that is now -- it's the size of California, Michael.

HOLMES: Yeah, all over the world as well. Two years later pieces of debris like this washing up on Hawaii's shores, but it's those little pieces there on your screen, little pieces of plastic, that might be doing the most harm. We've got a report coming up.

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HOLMES: Welcome back, everyone. Today marks the two-year anniversary of Japan's devastating tsunami. This video from a memorial service held today at Tokyo's national theater to remember the victims of that disaster.

Japan's emperor was there and said he prays that those affected will soon be able to lead peaceful lives. Nearly 19,000 people died after the massive earthquake hit, which triggered, of course, that tsunami. It ultimately sparked, also, the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, more than 300,000 people still living in temporary housing. Well, while victims are still struggling to get back to normal and the reconstruction efforts go on, there is another fallout from this disaster.

MALVEAUX: You can see from the video massive amounts of debris. Some of it now made its way across the Pacific Ocean to Alaska and Hawaii. It is not just a concern for environmentalists, but also scientists are now looking at how the after-effects could also make their way onto your dinner plate.

That's right. Our Kyung Lah has the story.

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KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Slamming the shores of one of Hawaii's most remote beaches, debris, big and small, covering every inch of the Kamilo Beach coastline.

The foreign markings tell where some of it comes from.

MEGAN LAMSON, HAWAII WILDLIFE FUND: These are definitely from Japan. This is some type of pickle. That's definitely Japanese.

LAH: Hawaii Wildlife Fund's Megan Lamson has seen debris from Japan hit at a growing rate since fall, like a refrigerator with Japanese on the temperature dial, large buoys, even an intact fishing boat from Japan, sucked into the Pacific on that horrifying day two years ago.

Traveling through the Pacific volunteers like HWF have been fighting the already big problem of marine debris, only made worse with the 1.5 million tons of floating tsunami debris.

LAMSON: It's disheartening to come out here and see all this marine debris in this area that's otherwise so remote, debris that's washing up from other countries.

LAH: This is not just a litter problem. Look at what's inside this albatross, a sea bird found dead, plastics fill its body.

David Hyrenbach and his team are researching the alarming rate of debris in the birds.

LAH: About 80 percent of this baby bird's stomach is indigestible plastic, fed this by its parents who confused it for food. HYRENBACK: Morally, this is terrible. How is this possible, right? I mean, majestic, far-ranging, beautiful birds, right? In a pristine place of the North Pacific and then you open them up and this is what you find.

LAH: Hyrenbach says every single bird he's opened up had some sort of plastic, some large ones like these toys and lighters in the adult birds.

HYRENBACH: It goes way beyond the albatross.

LAH: It's also in our fish. NOAA's fishery biologist, Lesley Jantz, is cutting into the stomach of a lancetfish.

It that may look scary, but this is what yellow fin and big-eye tuna eat, the tuna that ends up on your plate.

What is that black thing?

LESLEY JANTZ, FISHERY BIOLOGIST: That is a plastic bag.

LAH: Like a grocery bag?

JANTZ: Or, like, just a garbage bag.

LAH: Nearly half of the lancetfish Jantz cut into had plastic.

JANTZ: One thing that is a concern that we don't know is if any chemicals are absorbed into the tissue of the fish, which is a problem if it's going to be eaten by other fish that we consume.

LAH: A disaster still in the making, now widening its reach.

Environmental activists here say there's nothing they can do about the tsunami debris. They can just clean up the beaches.

But there is something consumers can do to help them out. They see plastic bottle caps of the plastic water bottles that we use around the world. Consumers can simply use less plastic.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Hawaii.

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MALVEAUX: All right. Things getting a little hotter in Israel.

Michael, I'm going to let you tell this story.

HOLMES: Yeah, you might say that. I was going to let you do it. It's the new debut of the Hebrew language edition of -- yes, there it is -- "Playboy," raising quite a few eyebrows. We'll discuss.

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HOLMES: Well, for decades, people around the world, or so I'm told, have been reading something called "Playboy" magazine, but for the articles many of them say. Now that racy mag is also available in Hebrew. And as Jonathan Mann reports, it is raising some eyebrows in the holy land.

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JONATHAN MANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is a land of three great faiths, a place of prayer and piety, and now of playmates as well. "Playboy" magazine has launched a local Hebrew language edition. Unlike the English magazine, it reads from right to left, but that's if you're looking at the articles. Natalie Dadon and Marine Teramaretz are on the cover and in the magazine for another reason.

NATALIE DADON, PLAYBOY ISRAEL'S FIRST COVER MODEL: There are people telling me, why are you doing that? And they like open their eyes like I'm doing something very wrong. There are people that very proud of me also.

MARINE TERAMARETZ, PLAYBOY ISRAEL'S FIRST PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH: It's the first time it's happening in Israel and the first time that an Israeli girl is being played (ph) Playboy playmate and I'm very proud and privileged to be a part of it.

MANN: Israelis are mindful of the 10 commandments and the devout who observe them. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. But what about thy newsstand's center fold? Reaction is mixed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hear about the magazine. It's not -- I don't use it because I'm religious.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's good?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lots of pictures with girls without clothes in it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's not so good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, it's very nice.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You seen it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't see it, but I want to see it.

MANN: Israel has already seen women in prominent roles in politics, the armed forces and every walk of life. Now it's going to see them prominently in "Playboy."

Jonathan Mann, CNN.

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MALVEAUX: All right. So "Playboy" magazine has got 30 foreign language editions in 33 different countries. Brazil, South Africa and Russia each have their own versions, which are actually successful in the newsstands. In the mid-1980s, Turkey made headlines when it became the first Muslim country to publish a version of "Playboy." The magazine ran into some pretty heavy controversy. It was forced out of print. You know, I know you're not going to admit it, whether or not you read "Playboy" I don't even know if I should ask you, Michael. Put you on the spot.

HOLMES: Who knew it was even still out there. I mean this is the Internet age. I'm surprised it's still in magazine form, to be honest.

MALVEAUX: For the articles, right?

HOLMES: For the articles. I had heard about --

MALVEAUX: The articles.

HOLMES: I've heard about the magazine. I - I -- that's all I know.

MALVEAUX: Yes.

HOLMES: And I want you to now pick it up from here and go from Israeli "Playboy" to the next story.

MALVEAUX: Yes, this is quite the turn here, huh, "Playboy" bunnies, CEOs, women can have it all. I don't know.

We're talking about what women want out of the careers, their family lives, whether or not they can have it all. Coming up, can companies and employers do more to help women rise to the top while still keeping that balance between work and family? And what should women do to actually land those leadership roles? What do they need to do? Up next.

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HOLMES: Welcome back.

Well, can women have it all? A high powered job and a family? Or is the work life balance just a little too hard? Well, this is why we're discussing it. Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandberg's new book "Lean In," which says women can have it all, they just have to lean in and be more ambitious and not worry about how people perceive their assertiveness.

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SHERYL SANDBERG, AUTHOR, "LEAN IN: WOMEN, WORK AND THE WILL TO LEAD": I want every little girl who someone says they're bossy to be told instead, you have leadership skills.

I bet you might have been told you were bossy at some point, because you -- you're no slacker. I want people to know what you do. You've published 13 books, you've run for political office, you've got a masters degree in economics from Cambridge University and you are also a mom with two grown daughters in their 20s now. So let's take a look at the statistics for just a minute, Arianna. We're talking about the Fortune 500 has only 21 female CEOs. About 12 women can be counted out as the 190 heads of state. And despite the most number of women in Congress, we're talking about less than one in five are women. So what do we need to do? How do we lean in so to speak?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, "THE HUFFINGTON POST": Well, what we need to do is to both have women leaning, which means not listening to the voices of doubt in our heads, but to also change the world into which women are leaning in. Right now the male-dominated model of success involves burnout, working around the clock, sleep deprivation, a terrible cost to our own health. And as women are scaling new heights, we already see that we have a 40 percent increase in heart disease among successful women and a 60 percent increase in diabetes.

So what I'm recommending is to learn to lean back in order to lean in more effectively and with a greater sense of well-being. And I think that's the challenge ahead. We have 18 sections on "The Huffington Post" dedicated to redefining success. And we're calling them "less stress, more living." I think that's the big challenge of our time. And when women achieve that, it will be better for them and better for men as well.

HOLMES: Arianna, I've got to chime in here. Now, actually during this program, since we started discussing this, I got an e-mail from a colleague in Europe who sends me this. "This makes me mad. The reality is so different to normal working women to these overachievers who clearly sacrifice their family life. Two-thirds of my salary goes on child care." This is a female colleague based in Europe. I'm curious, you know, did you experience much that held you back in your career?

HUFFINGTON: Well, that's why we're talking about what can companies do. Already many companies -- and not just Google and other pioneers, but companies in middle America and around Europe are prioritizing the health of their employees. They're offering meditation, yoga, de- stressing tools. And they realize that when they do that, it's not just good for the health of their employees, it's good for the bottom line, because here in the United States, businesses spend or lose $300 billion a year because of stress. So it's new ways to approach our working lives that are necessary now if women are going to be able to lean in and do that effectively and without a tremendous cost to their own health and their own families and their own relationships.

MALVEAUX: Arianna, that's a really -- it's a tough, tough order, I know. Do you think there needs to be more responsibility when you look at employers or even the government in terms of creating the kinds of things like flex time or paid family leave? We've heard very recently from Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former State Department official, who is saying that that really is where the focus should be. HUFFINGTON: I think it should be across the board. I'm very glad that Sheryl Sandberg's book has opened this very important conversation. Obviously women need to deal with what are called the obnoxious roommate living in our head. Those voices of doubt. Companies need to realize that the bottom line is correlated with the health of their employees and take appropriate measures. And we all need to realize that just because of new technologies, we can work from anywhere. It doesn't mean that we are going to be available to work from everywhere 24/7 at all times. That is simply distractive both to our lives and to our own judgment.

You're surrounded now, Suzanne, by very, very smart leaders in media, in politics, in business, making terrible decisions. Clearly they need a little more sleep and a little less stress in order to be more connected with our own wisdom and make better decisions, which is after all what leadership is about.

HOLMES: All right.

MALVEAUX: Absolutely.

HOLMES: Yes. Arianna, thanks so much. Arianna Huffington there.

HUFFINGTON: Thank you.

HOLMES: And we will be right back, Suzanne and I. So don't go away.

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HOLMES: Got to get this story in, Suzanne. I love this story. A standard soccer injury might be a pulled hamstring, twisted ankle, headache from hitting the ball all the time with your head. Probably not being bitten by that guy. It is called a pine marten.

MALVEAUX: Wow.

HOLMES: Yes, I found this story for you. It caused a stir when it ran onto the pitch during a Swiss Super League match Sunday. You can see the results. That is Zurich defender, Loris Benito, played goalie, cornered, got bitten on the finger for his trouble. That wasn't the end of it. The goalie had to go and get it; he had gloves on. He got bitten too. And, by the way, pine marten, I know you've heard of it. It's from the mustelid family, includes the mink, badger, otter, and weasel, but you knew that.

Final score: pine marten, 2, Swiss footballers, nil.

I had to do that fast, but I had to get it in, because it's hilariosu.

MALVEAUX: That is great. Now that I see it, it's all beginning to make sense.

HOLMES: And now you know what a pine marten is.

MALVEAUX: Now, exactly. I'm not a big soccer person, but now I know what a pine marten is as well. HOLMES: Exactly. That'll do it for me. I've got to go now. We squeezed that in. Over to you.

MALVEAUX: All right. Good to see you, Michael. See you tomorrow as well.